Personally I don't find the ending at all ambiguous, but I agree with the sentiment. I think kiss or no kiss, the final scene made sense in the context of the rest of the season, but their relationship just wasn't a big part of the series to start with, and the storytelling was clearly avoiding the taboo. This season would have gone very differently if they had decided to end the series with Makorra instead (which would have been terrible).

In some cases network meddling actually improves the final product. The creators didn't exactly make the best romance plots ever conceived. Needing to take a more subtle approach with "Korrasami" made their relationship feel like much more natural progression. We need not speak of the disasters that were Korra/Bolin, Korra/Mako, Asami/Mako, Bolin/Ginger and Bolin/Eska. Bolin/Opal got started off ok, then went completely off the rails.

Korra and Asami's relationship is the only one that doesn't feel lifted out of a soap opera.

I agree that the pacing was rushed, though I cut them some slack for this season since Nick cut the budget by about an episode partway through production.

Part of the pacing problem was having too many secondary and teriary characters to keep track of. That's another advantage of AtLA's Villiage of the Week format that I didn't appreciate at the time. It allowed the main cast to meet new characters, like Suki and Bumi, while providing a reason for them not to be in the show in later episodes.

Korra's team kept expanding. Toph left after saving her family, but I think almost everyone else, (Beifongs, new Airbenders, Prince Wu), pretty much stayed on full time. The thing is, I wonder what happened to these characters more than I care. For example, I didn't see Kya in the finale at all. She could have been helping Pema evacuate people, healing the wounded in Asami's office, or helping Korra freeze the mech. None of these would have made any difference in the story, but not having her anywhere made her conspicuous in her absence.

I can't really say if the Korra/Asami relationship was foreshadowed enough. I've read comment sections where every interaction between them was analyzed to death over whether or not it meant anything, which has confused my own memories on the subject. I remember thinking that the creators were trolling Korra/Asami shippers by having a bit of subtext to their interactions, but can't remember much for specific examples.

The only one I recall is when Korra blushed after Asami complimented her haircut. They did have her take a similar compliment from Tenzin's kids in stride, indicating that Asami meant more to her. The clip show would have been a good time to put in some more foreshadowing, since the few new minutes had a lot of Korra/Asami conversation. I'll never be sure, because I don't want to watch the clip show again.

Verrick's titles didn't strike me as noble lineage. They sounded like the kind of BS titles a vain, rich, famous person would get in the Avatar-verse. Like a real-world person gets an honorary PhD for donating a building to the college, or becomes Ambassador to Hungaria, or Sir Elton John. I was disappointed that when Verrick snapped at the camera guy, "Focus on ME. This is MY big day." that he wasn't corrected to US and OUR.

I felt they used the appropriate amount of Toph. She got to help Korra and rescue her family. Much more and it becomes an AtLA story, not a LoK one. I was a bit dissapointed in her complaining about being too old. Toph's only in her 80s. Original Bumi was over 110 when he retook his city. Sure, he had the help of the eclipse, but that just means he did it in 8 minutes.

I think the Avatar State gives the Avatar full access to Raava's power. If I remember the Wan episodes correctly, Wan could only bend one element at a time, with Raava having to pass through him to change. Once they merged, he could bend the elements sequentially. Do we ever see an Avatar bend multiple elements simultaneously without the Avatar state? When Roku finished his training, he stood on a beach and bent an element in each direction, but I think that was one after the other, not all at once.

The memories of past lives bit is a side effect of this. Since Raava was connected to the past Avatars, connecting to Raava allows access to those connections as well.

This would also explain why dying in the Avatar State ends the cycle. Dying with the connection to Raava fully open would also kill Raava. Raava would then be reborn within Vaatu, instead of within the new Avatar.

Finally, I bet designing new tech goes a lot faster with metalbending.

Isaac Hill wrote:I think the Avatar State gives the Avatar full access to Raava's power. If I remember the Wan episodes correctly, Wan could only bend one element at a time, with Raava having to pass through him to change. Once they merged, he could bend the elements sequentially. Do we ever see an Avatar bend multiple elements simultaneously without the Avatar state? When Roku finished his training, he stood on a beach and bent an element in each direction, but I think that was one after the other, not all at once.

Ehh... I think I'm misunderstanding you; we see past Avatars bending all four elements outside of the Avatar state pretty frequently, I thought. My recollection of Roku and Sozin's confrontation was that Roku is standing on a pillar of air while he bends a giant pillar of rock. Though, I dunno, maybe it's not simultaneous, but subsequent bending.

My sense was that only the Avatar can bend all four, and what the Avatar state does is a bit handwavy. 'Makes them more powerful'. 'Focuses them'. Etc. Korra flashes in and out periodically, or will use it for somewhat mundane shows of power, like grabbing whatshisnuts out of the chair one handed.

I'm also not convinced the past lives aspect is related to the power of the Avatar state as much as just being able to interface with the past lives.

... with gigantic melancholies and gigantic mirth, to tread the jeweled thrones of the Earth under his sandalled feet.

Roku blasts Sozin across the room with air, then lifts Sozin with earth. The earth bending happens after the air bending. Then, Roku goes into the Avatar State and levels the building. By simultaneous, I'm thinking Aang bending multiple elements while floating in an air ball during his fight with Ozai. Breathing fire while flying with the air glider would also count, but I don't think we ever saw that.

I understand that the show creators confirmed Asami/Korra, but aside from her blushing when Asami says "nice hair" it just didn't really happen on screen at all.Maybe if the show had had the chance to continue how it wanted to, and didn't have to rush everything, I might have felt like they had more than friendship going on, but honestly the fact that they held hands and stared into each others eyes just seemed forced. Everything else just said "this is a story wherein romantic love is not as important as other things." There was no chemistry.

"She’s a free spirit, a wind-rider, she’s at one with nature, and walks with the kodama eidolons”

I actually thought Korra was going to end up with Bolin when the show started. that relationship would have made WAY more sense. You know, go with the pretty one for awhile, realize he's a prat, time passes. Oh holy shit! This Bolin guy is basically just like me!

I found season four boring, and it was very easy to do other things while watching it. I also don't know why TLA was SO funny and LK NEVER figured its humor out. It was primarily timing errors. The jokes were placed all wrong, given the wrong type of space.

I really wanted to see more Bolin and Eska. That was getting interesting.

"She’s a free spirit, a wind-rider, she’s at one with nature, and walks with the kodama eidolons”

Hah, Bolin/Eska was the absolute worst part of the series for me. From the start it was portrayed as an abusive, emotionless relationship of convenience and manipulation then out of no-where we're supposed to think that these two characters actually feel strongly about each other. They didn't even try.

I already have a hate thread. Necromancy > redundancy here, so post there.

roc314 wrote:America is a police state that communicates in txt speak...

I think season three was best. 4 was just Plot fight plot fight, you barely had to pay attention. Season three, for the first time, genuinely made me laugh occasionally, but four was back to attempts at humor that fell totally flat. I really want to be a humor doctor. Go into shows and movies tell them how to place their jokes well for best effect. There is an upsetting correlation between female-based plots and the humor not being there, it just reinforces this bullshit notion that women aren't funny or something, but as this is the team that brought us TLA, that's clearly meaningless.

I'm a woman, and I will go in and fix your comedy. You still have to write the jokes, but I will tell you if they just totally suck, or where you need to place them to make them funny.

"She’s a free spirit, a wind-rider, she’s at one with nature, and walks with the kodama eidolons”

Sprocket wrote:I think season three was best. 4 was just Plot fight plot fight, you barely had to pay attention. Season three, for the first time, genuinely made me laugh occasionally, but four was back to attempts at humor that fell totally flat. I really want to be a humor doctor. Go into shows and movies tell them how to place their jokes well for best effect. There is an upsetting correlation between female-based plots and the humor not being there, it just reinforces this bullshit notion that women aren't funny or something, but as this is the team that brought us TLA, that's clearly meaningless.

LoK didn't have the whole AtLA team. Futurama writer Aaron Ehasz was head writer for AtLA, but not involved with LoK. That might explain why AtLA was better at integrating humor into its fantastic setting. I think the gag of Aang doing two-armed pushups, then one-armed, then no-armed (with airbending) was recycled from a Futurama bit where Bender does two-armed, then one-armed, then no-armed (via a jack in his torso).

Rewatching "The Avatar and the Firelord" reminded me how much I liked AtLA, so I rewatched the whole thing. One thing I noticed, that LoK lacked, was that we get to see at least a little bit of the characters' lives outside of their relationship with the Avatar. Sokka's trying to train children to fight. Suki's practicing with the rest of the Kyoshi warriors. Even Mai's family was in an episode. What was Asami doing before she met Mako? Did she have any friends? Did she make any during the time skip?

I was surprised by how inconsequential I found most of Book 3. It seemed like it went: filler, eclipse, field trips, finale. Two of the most memorable episodes were the flashback and the recap. That's not to say the rest was bad. It's just I could watch 3 episodes and not see any plot advancement.

Spoiler:

The Ember Island Players version of the story has Zuko as the one who fights the Blue Spirit. I assume this is to show that the Fire Nation doesn't know who the Blue Spirit is. But, this also has the side effect of leaving Zhao out of the story entirely. The guy dedicated his life to advancing up the ranks so he could go down in history as the moon slayer, and he doesn't even get a mention in his own country's propoganda play.

One thing I thought LoK had over AtLA is that the antagonists were motivated by a noble cause, like equality, fighting terrorism, reconnecting with the spirits, freedom, or order. Most of AtLA's firebenders (Ozai, Azula, early Zuko, Zhao) were motivated by their own desire for power or reputation. Zeong Zeong was the exception, but had a lot of self-loathing due to his firebending.

This is probably set up to contrast these firebenders, who are driven by aggression, with those who learn true firebending from the dragons (Iroh, later Zuko, Aang) and work for the greater good. But, it also contrasts with the non-bending fire-nationals we see. Pindao is a straight-up good guy. Mai's villiany is half-hearted at best. Ty Lee would have stayed with the circus if Azula let her.

There's a bit of a chicken-and-egg issue here. Does learning the wrong side of firebending make you a dick, or do you have to be a dick to begin with to learn it?

In "Zuko Alone", one of the soldiers says that the Fire Nation dresses POWs in FN uniforms and sends them, unarmed, to the front lines. It sounds like the POWs have taken the place of the new FN recruits as bait for distractions. Maybe they listened to Zuko's objections after all.

I was wrong about the Avatar state being needed to bend multiple elements at once. Aang earthbends while riding his air scooter in "Tales of Ba Sing Se".

Yeah I love what they did with Bolin Eska, but I'm also generally upset that Korra was into Whatsisface and never Bolin whom she had way more in common with. I guess Bolin just wasn't Femme enough for her, whereas Mako and Aasami could be siblings. er….

"She’s a free spirit, a wind-rider, she’s at one with nature, and walks with the kodama eidolons”

Sprocket wrote:I understand that the show creators confirmed Asami/Korra, but aside from her blushing when Asami says "nice hair" it just didn't really happen on screen at all.Maybe if the show had had the chance to continue how it wanted to, and didn't have to rush everything, I might have felt like they had more than friendship going on, but honestly the fact that they held hands and stared into each others eyes just seemed forced. Everything else just said "this is a story wherein romantic love is not as important as other things." There was no chemistry.

It's debatable whether that means anything at all, given that the world is not real and the only things we "know" about it are the things on the screen (or the page.) Granted the authors can tell us what they were thinking at the time, or how they imagined things in that world outside of what they depicted explicitly, but people of good will can differ as to whether the author's opinion is worth more than any other fan's.

My perspective is that while the authors/creators thought process is interesting, a work of art is like a child: it is what it is, not necessarily what you intended it to be. Once you've made something and given it to the world, it's no longer under your control in the way it was when you were drafting it. Michelangelo can report to Sculpture Today that "I always considered 'David' to be hung like a bear" but anyone can go and look at the statue and draw their own conclusions.

"Reasonable – that is, human – men will always be capable of compromise, but men who have dehumanized themselves by becoming the blind worshipers of an idea or an ideal are fanatics whose devotion to abstractions makes them the enemies of life."-- Alan Watts, "The Way of Zen"

Sort of like JK Rowling outing Dumbledore. Kinda defeats the point when an author has to confirm/explain to you that someone is gay, because that's admitting the kind of ambiguity straight people have historically used to straightwash narratives/figures.

Belial wrote:That's charming, Nancy, but all I hear when you talk is a bunch of yippy dog sounds.

I decided to finally continue watching Korra and Korra in episode 3 of the second season just annoys me with her support of the invasion of the south and not even owning up to it being a fucking invasion.

PeteP wrote:I decided to finally continue watching Korra and Korra in episode 3 of the second season just annoys me with her support of the invasion of the south and not even owning up to it being a fucking invasion.

Korra has generally been pretty annoying, and not a particularly likable character. I feel S3 and S4 are much better than the earlier seasons, but they still don't compare to TLA, IMO.

According to Den of Geek, Shyamalan planned to push through with a sequel as evidenced by the introduction of Prince Zuko's sister, Azula, at the end of the first film. It was going to be a trilogy. However, despite previous news that he had already penned a first draft for the follow-up, no updates have come up since then. It is also uncertain if development for this would push through some time in the future.

Seems the article was a bit misleading with its beginning. I admit I would have been morbidly curious about the result.

I don't understand why TLA:2 would be made. Who thinks that an idea for a successful film is a 5-years-delayed sequel to a widely panned adaptation of a TV franchise whose last two seasons weren't even shown on television? The only positive is that the original cast has aged out of the roles since then, so they might get better actors to tell us who believes their belief in their beliefs is stonger than their enemy's belief in their beliefs.

They finally deemed us around here worthy enough to release the fourth season... two countries over so we can now import the DVD set. I'm halfway through and seeing how I watched the episodes in one session speaks volumes about how much I like it. I mean the main antagonist1 is maybe just a little too neat in their victories, but I guess that just raises the tension for the end of the season. I can't wait to see how it ends.

The first Legend of Korra comic, Turf Wars: Vol 1, is out. Ambiguity of the final scene is resolved. The main plot is about the aftermath of the final battle, which picks up some of the dangling plot threads from the show. A day or two after reading it for the first time, I read it again, which I've never done before.

Spoiler:

I liked Kya's breakdown of how the 4 different nations responded to same-sex relationships. But, it did strike me as odd that all the named non-het characters were female. It's only a sample size of 4, but giving Kya's role here to, say, Bumi would have provided some balance.

I wonder if the two male airbenders holding hands and looking into each other's eyes while Kya explained how the Air Nomads were OK with same-sex relationships was a dig at people who thought Korra and Asami doing the same thing in the TV show wasn't enough to confirm a romantic relationship.

While the show was airing, there were some questions here about how the spirits affected Republic City, and what was going on with the triads. It turns out the spirits aren't happy with the new portal, and the triads were disrupted by the damage from the battle with Kuvira, and are having power struggles.

Mako's expression when Korra and Asami came out to him was great. Seeing it again in the next panel, then looking closely to verify that it was in fact the same image repeated, somehow made it funnier.

Kuvira beat the stuffing out of Korra For The Earth Empire and then Korra blasted her with her robot's own laser. Epic-Epic. <3 And then those criminals chasing Korra and ALL Airbenders. I loved that guy that mused on Airbender philosophy. And the little spirit that danced to that guy's flute music. Ha-ha. That show rocks. And Korra is so tough even when she's loving Mako.

Amy Lee wrote:Just what we all need... more lies about a world that never was and never will be.

Azula to Long Feng wrote:Don't flatter yourself, you were never even a player.

I read up to the end of season 2. I like your take on the Dark Avatar fight. Unalaq made me sad. He loved-loved power and control to the death. And I like that Korra didn't just get her Bending back. She has to work for it yes! And the funeral for Unalaq and Korra's musings made me teary eyed. Be careful that those who fight monsters do not become monsters themselves. I even felt bad for Amon for getting rejected.

Amy Lee wrote:Just what we all need... more lies about a world that never was and never will be.

Azula to Long Feng wrote:Don't flatter yourself, you were never even a player.